EPA SEEKS BIG EMISSIONS CUTS – POW Bergdahl bumps Shinseki, VA from spotlight – NO ASIANS IN CABINET FOR FIRST TIME SINCE 2000 – In AZ, ‘Cesar Chavez’ for Congress

EPA SEEKS BIG EMISSIONS CUTS – Amy Harder, Reid J. Epstein and Kristina Peterson report in the A1 lead of the WSJ: “The Environmental Protection Agency will propose mandating power plants cut U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions 30% by 2030 from levels of 25 years earlier, according to people briefed on the rule, an ambitious target that marks the first-ever attempt at limiting such pollution. The rule-making proposal, to be unveiled Monday, sets in motion the main piece of President Barack Obama's climate-change agenda and is designed to give states and power companies flexibility in reaching the target. But it also will face political resistance and become fodder in midterm congressional races, particularly in energy-producing states, and is destined to trigger lawsuits from states and industry that oppose it.

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-- “The rule would affect hundreds of fossil-fuel power plants—hitting the nation's roughly 600 coal-fired plants the hardest. … For the president, the rule is a major element of his attempt to secure a second-term legacy. While Mr. Obama is expected to remain out of the spotlight when the EPA unveils the rule Monday, he plans to join a conference call with the American Lung Association, casting the rule as needed to protect public health as well as to reduce the carbon emissions that scientists say contribute to climate change.” http://on.wsj.com/1ojTTBj

-- ON SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER’S BLOG,a new video this morning reminds voters that with the EPA rule, Obama is keeping his promise that “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” “The president’s plan would indeed cause a surge in electricity bills – costs stand to go up $17 billion every year,” the blog says. “But it would also shut down plants and potentially put an average of 224,000 more people out of work every year. It's a sucker punch for families everywhere paying more for just about everything in the president’s fragile economy.” Watch here:http://1.usa.gov/1khKXhj

FOR AMERICAN POW, IT’S A LONG ROAD BACK TO IDAHO – Mark Landler writes of A1 of the NYT: “For Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the road home to Idaho began with a brief helicopter ride from the rugged frontier of eastern Afghanistan to Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul. His return to anything close to a normal life will take much longer. After nearly five years in captivity — the lone American prisoner of war in Afghanistan, held by Taliban fighters in utter isolation and deprivation — Sergeant Bergdahl is physically weakened, military officials said, and will need to undergo a thorough psychological examination. His recovery, they said, will be a multistep process, beginning with medical treatment and initial counseling at an American military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, then by longer-term therapy at a military medical center in San Antonio before culminating in a carefully managed homecoming in Hailey, Idaho.

-- “Even then, Sergeant Bergdahl, 28, will probably need lengthy counseling to help him deal with the trauma of his years as a prisoner of war and to adjust to his new life, according to experts in long-term captivity. How fast or fully he recovers, they said, is impossible to predict.” http://nyti.ms/1tB48CH

-- BERGDAHL’S PARENTS, in a news conference yesterday, told their son they were proud of him since they have yet to speak to him directly. CNN: “‘There's a reason for that, and that's because Bowe has been gone so long that it's going to be very difficult to come back,’ said Bob Bergdahl. He compared his son's situation to that of a diver going deep on a dive: ‘If he comes up too fast, it could kill him.’” Watch here: http://cnn.it/1klVR4H

-- BERGDAHL’S RELEASE prompted mixed reaction from fellow service members, some of whom consider him a deserter. WaPo: http://wapo.st/1tALDOx

-- Real-life “Homeland”? The NY Post: “It sounds like the script from the TV show ‘Homeland.’ Bowe Bergdahl is finally free five years after being captured by the Taliban. Unfortunately for him, his girlfriend Monica Lee has found love with another man.” http://bit.ly/1iKYwAG

BERGDAHL BUMPS SHINSEKI, VA FROM SPOTLIGHT – Kevin Cirilli writes for The Hill: “The Taliban’s release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl dominated the Sunday talk shows, pushing Friday’s resignation of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki from the headlines. The Sunday shows were packed with Republicans launching into political attacks against President Obama and the administration for transferring five Taliban members from Guantanamo Bay to Qatar in exchange for the release of Bergdahl, the 28-year-old whom the Taliban released on Saturday, and administration officials defending the decision.

-- “‘Disturbing,’ was how Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) put it on ABC's ‘This Week.’‘Dangerous,’ echoed House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) on CNN's ‘State of The Union.’ ‘We need more information about the conditions of where they're going to be and how,’ said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on CBS's ‘Face The Nation.’ Administration officials hit back hard against the insinuation that Obama negotiated with terrorists and broke the law requiring him to notify Congress 30 days before the release or transfer of Guantanamo Bay prisoners. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice in separate Sunday show interviews said that Obama acted within his constitutional authority as commander in chief, forced to act against non-state actors as Bergdahl's health was deteriorating.” http://bit.ly/1kA2xHz

SANDERS MOVES TO CENTER STAGE IN VA DEBATE – Manu Raju and Burgess Everett report for the hometown paper: “He’s a combative, self-described ‘democratic socialist’ more prone to hand-to-hand combat with Republicans than cutting deals with them. But Bernie Sanders now is tasked with leading Democrats through a sensitive political dilemma that’s putting their party on the defensive. With Eric Shinseki out at the Department of Veterans Affairs, the focus now shifts to Capitol Hill, placing the two-term Vermont independent and Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee chairman at the center of the growing VA health care controversy. Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats, is assembling a legislative package to help address the issue in the hopes that he can consolidate support within the veterans community and assuage concerns of vulnerable Democrats.” http://politi.co/1tAZYKX

NO SEAT AT THE TABLE -- “There Are No Asian-Americans In The Cabinet For The First Time Since 2000,” By The Daily Beast’s Tim Mak: “For the first time in 15 years, there won't be an Asian-American in the president's Cabinet. But Asian-American groups don't seem to mind. The resignation of Veteran Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki means that for the first time since the Clinton Administration that there will be no Asian-American members of the cabinet, a marked shift for a minority community that was once disproportionately overrepresented. It’s a shift that might have prompted an outpouring of concern if it had occurred to any other minority group, but has been in this case been greeted with nonchalance within the Asian-American community.

-- “The underrepresentation of Asians in Congress and now the highest rungs of the Obama administration reflects the failure of Asian-Americans to more aggressively demand that their seat at the table be held by someone who looks like them. Asian-American groups have not tended to demand representation on the basis of race. … In 2009, Asian-Americans in the cabinet included Shinseki, Nobel Prize winning Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and former Washington Gov. Gary Locke. At that point, Christopher Lu held the position of cabinet secretary, a senior position that involves coordinating between cabinet members and the White House. …

-- “There are still high-ranking Asian-Americans in the president’s administration: Lu remains a senior agency official, and the First Lady’s chief of staff, Tina Chen, is Asian-American. Rhea Suh, another member of the community, is the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget at the Department of the Interior.” http://thebea.st/RUFSyZ

GOOD MONDAY MORNING, June 2, 2014, and welcome to The Huddle, your play-by-play preview of all the action on Capitol Hill. Send tips, suggestions, comments, complaints and corrections to swong@politico.com. If you don’t already, please follow me on Twitter @scottwongDC.

TODAY IN CONGRESS – The House is on recess for the entire week. The Senate is in at 2 p.m. and will vote at 5:30 p.m. on the nomination of Keith M. Harper to become United States Representative to the UN Human Rights Council.

THE OBAMA PARADOX – POLITICO’s Carrie Budoff Brown and Jennifer Epstein’s must-read deep dive into Obama’s second term includes a testy exchange with Sen. Mark Begich over the broken Obamacare site: “The goal late last year could not have been more ambitious: save the presidency. For White House officials, that realization crystallized during meetings like the one that Obama, humbled and remorseful, hosted in November with a dozen Democratic senators. … The senators, all facing reelection in 2014, were furious because they had seen their approval numbers nose dive almost overnight, largely because the most tech-savvy administration in history couldn’t develop a health care website that worked.

-- “At one point, Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska thrust at the president ‘reams of stuff’ to make his case. ‘I had print screenshots of computer pages,’ he said. ‘I said, ‘This is all screwed up. Why aren’t we fixing this?’’ Speaking of Obama, Begich added, ‘What he understood was what they had done, election candidate or not, it had hurt everybody.’ According to several participants, Begich and his colleagues demanded to know how committed Obama was to fighting for the Senate majority. Obama was known as a fierce competitor when his name was on the ballot, not so much when it was not. ‘I don’t really care to be president without the Senate,’’ Obama said, according to attendees, signaling that he knew the health care debacle created resentment among Democrats and that he wanted to make amends. That was a devastating comedown from only a year earlier.” http://politi.co/1kntHWO

‘CESAR CHAVEZ’ RUNNING FOR PASTOR’S SEAT – Rebekah Sanders has the story for the Arizona Republic: “A mystery candidate for Congress with the potential to draw valuable votes in a close race has baffled longtime political watchers for months. Democratic contenders with meticulously honed identities are battling for retiring U.S. Rep. Ed Pastor's coveted safe seat in Phoenix and the West Valley. In a district where voters have recognized Pastor, Arizona's first Latino congressman, on the ballot for nearly 40 years, the familiarity of the mystery candidate's name alone could capture support. The candidate has no money, no endorsements and no paid campaign staff. … But he shares the moniker of one of the Hispanic community's most revered civil-rights leaders. His name is Cesar Chavez. … ‘It's almost as simple as saying Elvis Presley is running for president,’ Chavez, the candidate, said in a phone interview. ‘You wouldn't forget it, would you?’”http://bit.ly/1mIMeLB

THINGS GET DIRTY AHEAD OF CA’S JUNGLE PRIMARY – Carla Marinucci writes for the San Francisco Chronicle: “Even in a state where campaign mudslinging can be over the top, the attacks ahead of Tuesday's primary election rank as some of the muddiest yet.

-- “In the South Bay, congressional candidate Ro Khanna has been lambasted in a mailer by the fellow Democrat he is trying to unseat, Rep. Mike Honda of San Jose, for overspending - at age 19, at the University of Chicago, when his student government went $100 in the red. …

-- “Elsewhere in the East Bay, Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Dublin, is being vilified in a mailer from his Democratic challenger, state Sen. Ellen Corbett of San Leandro, for voting in favor of Republican Rep. Paul Ryan's budget. The problem: He didn't.

-- “The bad blood underscores how California's top-two primary system - under which the leading two finishers advance to the November general election, regardless of party - is leading to intensified campaign attacks, especially in races pitting moderate Democrats against more liberal, labor-backed candidates. It's clear that ‘the Democratic coalition is changing, and it's facing some strife within the tent,’ said David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University. ‘And that strife is being felt in what will be a low-turnout primary.’ The result is a trend toward what McCuan calls ‘junk-food politics,’ or ‘'House of Cards' meets McDonald's’ - attention-grabbing campaigning aimed at getting the blood pumping, but offering little substance.” http://bit.ly/1jLXBPN

-- CA’s NEW PRIMARY SYSTEM also caused a spate of retirements this year, Janet Hook writes for the WSJ: “Among those retiring this year are GOP House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon and two senior Democrats, [Reps. Henry] Waxman and George Miller. The open seats have unleashed a wave of pent-up ambition. In Mr. Waxman's Los Angeles County district, 18 candidates are running in the primary, including 10 Democrats.” http://on.wsj.com/1khR4Cl

FINAL TEA-PARTY TEST IN MISSISSIPPI – The NYT’s Jonathan Martin reported over the weekend from the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans: “Tea Party thunder fills the Hilton Riverside ballroom with denunciations of President Obama and criticism of congressional Republicans for not being tough enough on him. The atmosphere has the energetic but hostile tone that helped propel conservatives to success in 2010. Yet outside of this hermetic setting, where the Republican Leadership Conference was meeting this weekend, the political reality was sharply different: Incumbents are fending off Tea Party challengers in primary after primary, and the establishment is reasserting itself as the party’s center of gravity. The ultimate test of its strength will come on Tuesday in Mississippi, where Senator Thad Cochran, a 76-year-old master of pork-barrel spending who is seeking a seventh term, will face a challenge from State Senator Chris McDaniel, who has attracted support from Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum and an array of conservative groups. After the Mississippi results are in, Tea Party-aligned forces will have little opportunity to upend mainline Republicans, or even throw them much of a scare.” http://nyti.ms/1nXwbwm

HOW VITTER SKIRTED CAMPAIGN FINANCE LAWS – Shane Goldmacher writes for National Journal: “David Vitter had a $1 million problem. Back in January, by the time the Louisiana senator announced his long-rumored run for governor, Vitter had already lined up supporters and developed a campaign battle plan. Still, one major hurdle remained: state law barred him from using the seven-figure sum he had amassed in Senate campaign funds. But through a super PAC and some creative lawyering, Vitter and his allies appear to have found a way to redirect all of that money to support his gubernatorial campaign. And in doing so, they've pioneered a new method for politicians nationwide to get around old prohibitions on spending federal money on state races, and vice versa. Along the way, Vitter has become perhaps the first politician in the country to be the largest funder of his own super PAC.” http://bit.ly/1wT1rRm

CAN GOP EXPAND THEIR MAP IN BLUE STATES? – WaPo’s Philip Rucker reports from Portland, Ore.: “To Republicans, the Senate race in this solidly Democratic state presents an alluring opportunity. Oregon’s health insurance exchange has been one of the country’s most troubled. President Obama’s approval rating has fallen below 50 percent. Sen. Jeff Merkley, a liberal Democrat first elected on Obama’s coattails in 2008, is not terribly well known. And in Monica Wehby, Republicans have a fresh-faced, female challenger who they believe matches the moment: a pediatric neurosurgeon and political outsider who rails against the Affordable Care Act but is relatively moderate on social issues.

-- “Republicans don’t need Oregon in order to win back the Senate this year. But they do need to make inroads in blue states such as this one to compete for the White House in 2016. To expand its reach beyond older white men in the Deep South and the Midwest, the GOP must persuade voters to switch sides for candidates like Wehby.” http://wapo.st/1mHn6or

FRIDAY’S TRIVIA WINNER – William Coakley was first to correctly answer that, in addition to founding and designing the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson also submit architectural plans for the White House. However, his design was not chosen.

TODAY’S TRIVIA – Eamonn Dundon has today’s question: In what year was the first Congressional Baseball Game played? Who invented it and what was his home state? The first person to send the correct answer to swong@politico.com gets a mention in the next Huddle.

GET HUDDLE emailed to your Blackberry, iPhone or other mobile device each morning. Just enter your email address where it says “Sign Up.” http://www.politico.com/huddle/

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About The Author

Scott Wong covers transportation for POLITICO Pro, and authors The Huddle, POLITICO’s popular morning tipsheet on Congress. He was a congressional reporter with the publication from 2010 to 2012.

He reported from Tucson, Ariz., after the deadly shooting rampage that severely injured Rep. Gabby Giffords and helped break a story about Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill’s private plane that led to her admission she owed more than $300,000 in state property taxes.

He got his professional start in journalism covering local government for two small newspapers in his native San Francisco Bay Area. He later became a staff writer for The Arizona Republic, where he covered the Arizona statehouse and Phoenix City Hall.

After graduating from UCLA, he spent a year teaching English in a rural mountain village in Japan. He is a member of the Asian American Journalists Association, and lives with his wife and daughter in Washington.